


family

by cougarlips



Series: fanille week 2017 [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy XIII Series
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F, Orphans, Pre-Canon, War, implied suicidal tendencies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-05-08
Packaged: 2018-10-29 15:02:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10856418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cougarlips/pseuds/cougarlips
Summary: She was open arms and solid hugs when the younger kids needed comfort, a warm body and soothing lullabies when the nights were cold and there weren’t enough blankets to go around, nimble fingers and a gentle touch when someone needed what would’ve been a mother’s touch in a previous life.She was everything good and kind but oh, how she hurt, and Fang saw it.





	family

**Author's Note:**

> written for [fanille week](http://fanilleweek.tumblr.com)!!

Few people saw past Vanille’s facade.

It was in place long before Fang truly knew Vanille, when they were both just orphans forced together on Oerba because their families, their clans, were taken from them and all they _had_ was each other. Vanille built walls around her heart in an attempt to protect herself and ignore her pain. She smiled and laughed like she had no worry in the world, even though she _did_ ache; she felt like she was on the verge of collapsing under the weight of it all.

Vanille was a child in every way except for the fact that she, like the other orphans, had this _look_ in her eyes, a look that aged her beyond her years, a look that said she knew more pain and devastation than anyone her age should ever have to know.

But still, even then, she was bubbling laughter and smiles that made the sun shine. She was open arms and solid hugs when the younger kids needed comfort, a warm body and soothing lullabies when the nights were cold and there weren’t enough blankets to go around, nimble fingers and a gentle touch when someone needed what would’ve been a mother’s touch in a previous life.

She was everything good and kind but oh, how she _hurt_ , and Fang saw it. Fang always saw it. Fang, who wore her heart on her sleeve and held no pretenses. Fang, who buried herself in manual labor as she grieved. Fang, who threw herself into her training every single day, who always returned to the orphanage well past dusk to soft cries from Vanille’s bunk.

Fang saw the shield behind the green of Vanille’s eyes, saw the cool flash that turned them into something like stained glass. She saw the pinch of Vanille’s mouth even when she smiled and the tight control she kept over her body.

Watching Vanille fight -- seeing her in action -- changed everything for Fang.

It was both a blessing and a curse to watch the typically easy-going Vanille so lethal and vicious on the battlefield, and it made Fang _want_. Suddenly she saw Vanille as someone who could rival even herself. Suddenly she saw the part of Vanille that she was so desperate to stifle, to pretend didn’t exist: the orphan who lost her family to the war and who refused to see it happen again.

Before, it was true she could, perhaps, _see_ Vanille. She could see the way Vanille put up a front, the way she used her youth as a distraction to keep others from seeing the way she’d been affected, but Fang never saw what she held underneath. Fang couldn’t _read_ Vanille.

_After_ , though -- after watching her fight with furious abandon, with a reckless edge that made clear she held little regard for her own life; after watching her take down a behemoth by herself; after watching her (soaked with sweat and bathing in blood) skin the beast to create a pelt and discuss out loud whether she should make it a skirt or perhaps a new waistpack -- _after_ , Fang felt a kinship with her that she’d never felt before. It was as if, all of a sudden, Fang _understood_ her.

(Later Fang would find out how Vanille watched _Fang_ from afar, how she always admired yet envied the way Fang could be so open with her pain. How Fang refused to let anyone judge her for how she grieved so openly. How she always wished she could do the same.)

The first time Vanille let Fang see her with all defenses lowered, Fang thought she couldn’t love anyone more than she loved Vanille in that moment. She held Vanille close, pressed her head into her chest and wrapped her arms tightly around her shoulders, nose buried in loose red curls and breathing in a scent so uniquely _Vanille_ that the only way Fang could describe it was that it was like she was breathing in _home_.

It was an honor, Fang decided, to be allowed to see Vanille so vulnerable. To see her with her hair curling around her features, her mouth soft, her eyes unguarded. To see her totally devoid of jewelry, of beaded necklaces and bracelets up to her forearms. In fact, she moved so quietly in the evenings after she removed what effectively became her armor that it sometimes startled Fang, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Sometimes Vanille swaddled herself up in any one of Fang’s discarded saris and curled up in Fang’s bunk, and she let herself feel small and fragile so that when Fang finally clambered into their trailer she could wrap herself around Vanille’s form and hold her tight, could press soft kisses into her shoulder and keep her close, as if just her sheer presence could keep Vanille from falling apart in her arms.

If only it could have stayed like that, Fang sometimes lamented to herself: Two broken birds learning to heal, learning to _love_. Two girls finding a home in the other’s arms. Two orphans forging a family between themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr at @[twilighttrio](http://twilighttrio.tumblr.com)!


End file.
